Sunday, March 26, 2017

That's WTF I'm here??

All human history has one purpose: To repair Salo's spaceship.

Salo, the Tralfamadorian explorer, is a robot
built millennia earlier to carry a message to a distant galaxy. His
spacecraft is powered by the Universal Will to Become or UWTB, the
"prime mover" which makes matter and organization wish to appear out of
nothingness. (UWTB, Vonnegut informs the reader, was responsible for the
Universe in the first place and is the greatest imaginable power
source). A small component on Salo's spacecraft breaks and strands him
here in the Sol System for over 200 millennia. He requests help from
Tralfamadore, and his fellow Tralfamadorians respond by manipulating
human history so that primitive humans evolve and create a civilization
in order to produce the replacement part. Rumfoord's encounter with the
chrono-synclastic infundibulum, the following war with Mars and
Constant's exile to Titan were manipulated via the Tralfamadorians'
control of the UWTB. Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and the Kremlin are all messages in the Tralfamadorian geometrical language, informing Salo of their progress.